Friends' reunion after 74 years 'like a resurrection'

Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Sep 16, 2004 by BILL VOGRIN THE GAZETTE

Shirley Davison and Nancy Wesson Graves are planning a party next month to celebrate the 100th birthday of their mother, Claudia "Molly" McGee.

One of the first names on the guest list is McGee's old friend Frank Harbour, who turned 100 in July.

What's the big deal? People turn 100 every day.

McGee and Harbour aren't just "old friends."

They were friends for a brief eight years as children. It was no ordinary eight years.

They were the children of families who left everything behind in cities and farms to become "homesteaders" -- a wave of pioneers who squatted on unclaimed land and settled the West.

They shared eight years of hardship and friendship. Experiences burned deeply into the memories of McGee and Harbour. So deeply that they recall them vividly.

After 74 years apart and no contact, McGee and Harbour were reunited in 1996 as neighbors at the Satellite Hotel.

The bond forged during childhood was strong enough that they immediately rekindled their friendship. It has provided a lifeline to their pasts and given each of them a special friend as they enjoy their twilight years. And celebrate their 100th birthdays.

"It was like a resurrection," Harbour said of reuniting with McGee in 1996. "It generated a stream of memories. Happy memories."

McGee, and her penchant for details, gets credit for the reunion. Her husband, Lester, died in 1992 after 58 years of marriage spent in the La Junta/Las Animas area about 100 miles southeast of Colorado Springs.

McGee moved to the Satellite -- a high-rise condo near Academy Boulevard and Airport Road -- to be closer to her daughters, Springs residents Davison, 69, and Graves, 66.

In 1996, she noticed the name of Satellite resident Frank Harbour in a condo newsletter.

"I wondered if that was the same Frank Harbour I grew up with," McGee said. "I decided to call. I couldn't believe it."

Soon, they were reminiscing and sharing stories and photos from their days in Smith Canyon, south of La Junta.

McGee's family -- her maiden name was Broce -- moved from West Virginia in 1910 and in 1912 homesteaded a place 16 miles south of La Junta where they tried to raise cattle, pigs and chicken.

The Broce family lived in a sod house, cooked under an old cedar tree and kept milk and butter cool by suspending them in a bucket in the family's hand-dug well.

Nine miles away, Harbour's family enjoyed a sandstone house and ran a country store at a junction known as Harbourdale.

McGee and her brother walked four miles to the oneroom Riverside School, while Harbour rode a pony.

"They were happy times," Harbour said.

"Nobody had any money. There was no electricity. No phone. No crime. We never locked a door.

"I wouldn't want to go back. But we were happy."

Harbour recalls riding in covered wagons and buggies pulled by horses at a top speed of 3 mph.

"It took all day to go to La Junta," Harbour said. "There was no road rage in those days."

McGee has similar memories of trying to scratch out a living in the desert-like country of Smith Canyon.

She recalls her dad cutting cedar trees and selling the posts in La Junta.

Or her dad and brother going to Kansas during the wheat harvest, leaving the women on the farm.

The family gave up the homestead in 1926 and eventually moved to La Junta.

"We couldn't make a living out there," she said.

Their lives after Smith Canyon took much different paths.

Harbour left in 1922 to continue his schooling in La Junta. Eventually, he graduated from the old Colorado A&M University in Fort Collins and became a teacher.

After a miserable Dust Bowl year at the country school near the Kansas border in Holly, Harbour and his first wife, Catherine, moved in 1935 to Woodland Park, where he taught high school.

He served as superintendent of public schools and then postmaster before retiring in 1973. Catherine died that year, and Harbour later remarried. He and his wife, Midge, moved to Colorado Springs in 1989.

Meanwhile, McGee finished sixth grade -- she still has her report card signed by Miss Venda Black on April 22, 1922 -- and later moved to La Junta, where she worked in a laundry and a creamery.

That's where she met Lester, who worked for the Santa Fe Railroad. They married in 1934, eventually settling in Las Animas where they raised their family. He retired in 1970 after 47 years at the railroad.

Since their reunion, McGee and Harbour have seen each other regularly.

"Every Friday night, we see each other at dinner," Harbour said.

Both realize they are lucky to have each other -- especially as McGee approaches her milestone birthday Oct. 24.

"Everyone else is gone," McGee said. "We're the last two left."

Tell us about your neighborhood: 636-0193 or bvogrin@gazette.com